Six Months From Now...

Six months from now, I’ll be doing English papers on Shakespeare, and taking courses in Greek mythology, ethics, logic and religion.

Six months from now, I’ll be supporting myself by working part time.

Six months from now I’ll be learning how to draw better.

Six months from now, I’ll have an active blog, instead of month-long dead spaces.

Six months from now, I’ll be taking care of myself, doing what I love to do: which is writing and learning about the literature that has defined our culture, its beauty and depth.

Six months from now, I’ll be in the same place physically, but older, more mature, more joyous than right now.

In six months, I’ll be happy to make supper regularly with my roommate

In six months, my money (not anybody else’s!) will be budgeted to the dollar.

In six months, I’ll be seeing more plays than I’ve seen in the last three years

Sometime in six months, I’ll be playing video games, socially, healthily, and without guilt.

In six months, I’d have been a leader at camp, and an active part of that community.

In six months, I’ll be a catch.

In six months, I’ll be running 10k without stopping.

In six months, I’ll be closer to God, and to reality.

Six months from now, I’ll be fit, and able to beat my roommate in squash, like I once did.

Sometime in six months, I’ll either know how to blow glass, make glass sculptures, or learn how to work a forge.

In six months, my imagination will be expanded.

In six months I will be able to (and will) handle more responsibility.

Six months from now, my heart will not cry out in pain from hopes and dreams deferred.

Six months from now, I’ll be walking a path that I’ve should have walked three years ago.

The Pipe: Worldline

The idea of a timestamp is a curious one. It locks in a word, a phrase, a sentence typed into the temporal ether. You chat, you text, write an email, or a letter, and those words, those ideas suddenly have a place, in all four dimensions. It is no longer floating free. It becomes concrete, solid. Real.

I came across the idea of a worldline, and it struck me as poetic. You could say Einstein, who came up with the notion, was the poet of physics, and indeed the way he interacted with science was with an artist's genius. It goes like this: a worldline is the sequential path of something through both time and space, from the moment it is created to the moment of it's non-existence. A worldline is the string that binds us to place in this universe, as we know and see and perceive it. Invisible to the naked eye, but as real as the touch of the keyboard beneath my fingertips.

When we are gone, when we no longer exist, our worldines ended in this place, that string remains. A record of ourselves is left behind in some form or fashion. In the gametic DNA that we pass on, in our letters, or in some book. We weave together, one string ravelling into another.

A ship's worldline is it's log. It must contain the date and the position, and you can see the course that it charted through the brine and spray. This is my log, as small and insignificant as it is. This is where I can stamp my mark and say: Phil was here.

Spring

Time passes and hope springs eternal
Leaves bud, ready to burst
There's a feeling in this cold, near-spring air
That brings back memories of summer's fragrance
And the promise of verdant warm days
The cusp of change approaches
And summer threatens to spill over
Heralding its journey with the bird's call
And sweet southern winds
That lie around one's neck
Like hearth-warmed mantle

A little something pastoral to change the mood, eh?

Mirage

Ah Love, I languish at the thought of thee
The ghost of your embrace haunts me
For I have never known your touch
Instead Your spectre follows me
And mocks me
Are you dead?
Or is the whisper I hear
But an echo on the wind,
A moment's idle imagination
Or the distant discourse of lovers
In some hidden glen
The like I have not known or seen
Or felt the soft crush of grass
And Your voice murmuring in my ear
Such like is not mine to have or share

Mix this with two parts angst and one part loneliness. Much inspired by Goethe's "The Sorrows of Young Werther."

Compulsion

Desire's voice drives nails
Of madness into my head
That yearns only for rest
From this fearful enchanted slumber
To wake from this unholy consciousness
It does not stop, pushing me further
Into the valley of its longing
Like water spilling over the cliff
Of suicidal sickened love
It's empty whispers tell me tales
Of satisfaction and gratified wishes
Of hypnotizing dreams and fantasie
That one can wake to
Desire's mirage leads me
Stumbling to false oasis'
In this desert of my life
Thirsty for the springs of companionship
Its whispers turn to sand and dust
Widening the hollow inside my chest
And withering away the face of reason
Till I turn away from its chapped
And blistered visage
Into the wide maw of the howling gale

Solitaire

Love is absent
Mere glimmers of a fool's gold
Dreams rail, chained and pent
And my arms have nothing to hold

Flint

The spark waits to be struck
Of inspiration and blind luck
The mind calls to be lit
By the gift of Perseus, illicit
This hearth is damp, spoiled and spare
And chilled by a lonely wintry air
Throw open the shutters and let in the light!
Too often closed by some imagined night
Stoke the dimly glowing coal
Think phœnix, mind! Soar like a kite